Health Insurance All But Useless with High Deductibles

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“High Deductibles in Health Insurance”

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Quoting from the New York Times today, a subject often encountered daily, so rarely discussed in the media. My own colleagues cannot afford health insurance deductibles, let alone the average person who is not a medical professional. Five compounding pharmacies have closed in the last few months! Compounded medications are no longer covered! My patients cannot afford the insurance denials for medications, and how are we practicing medicine when each visit must be taken up with prior authorizations? No wonder the cost of medical care has gone up. What do we do for chronic pain or treatment resistant depression when our people have failed all drugs? Research funding never seems to go toward pain or depression.

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To the Editor:

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Re “Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless” (news article, Nov. 15):

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My self-employed husband and I have found ourselves in this predicament: affordable health care premiums but a prohibitive $5,000 yearly deductible.
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Truly accessible health care cannot be achieved when insurance companies are the primary beneficiaries of policies and when those who are “insured” still cannot afford to see a doctor.

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SUSAN A. McGREGOR

North Kingstown, R.I.
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To the Editor:

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Your article does a good job of describing cost-shifting from insurance companies to medical consumers but doesn’t explore the issue of risk-shifting.

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People pay insurance companies premiums to take on risk. Insurance companies try to avoid as much risk as they can. High deductibles and co-payments are just part of the risk-shifting.
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Other strategies being used include narrow networks of doctors and hospitals, denial of access to high-quality and often high-cost specialists, questioning and limitation of access to expensive drugs, questioning and limiting high-cost testing, and even offering free health club memberships to screen out those with high-cost disabilities.
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At a health insurance fair in San Francisco earlier this month, participants selected from various plans offered through the Affordable Care Act. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
This process is about a lot more than high deductibles. But the end result is that good people are not getting the care they thought that they paid for. And the political leaders of both major parties approve these hassle factors — as our courts do — in the name of preserving America’s global competitiveness.
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BRANT S. MITTLER

San Antonio

The writer is a cardiologist and a lawyer.
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To the Editor:
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So at the end of the day, health care is no more affordable than it was before Obamacare was enacted! Why should we be surprised?
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Several decades ago, in an effort to promote “wellness,” we saw an increasing trend to encourage people to visit their doctor more regularly and more often, by offering plans that covered basic health maintenance costs. State regulations demanded coverage of some services, and the Affordable Care Act only added to the list that must now be provided without cost to the user.
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Insurance in the traditional sense provides coverage for the unforeseen event. In health care, that would be serious injury and catastrophic disease. What we have today is what the insurance industry refers to as “trading dollars.”
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Imagine if car insurance covered all basic services to reduce the risk of future damage, like oil changes, new brakes and even periodic visits to the car wash. We would see huge increases in the cost of car insurance, although we would also see policies that are offered at low premiums but with high deductibles and high co-payments.
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MICHAEL A. SMITH

Wells, Me.

The writer is a retired equity research analyst who covered the insurance industry.
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To the Editor:
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Your article about high deductibles in health insurance was accurate as far as it went, but a complete discussion of the benefits of health insurance coverage would have included the fact that insurers negotiate substantially reduced payments for in-network medical services for the insured.
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I have a high-deductible policy, but the payments I have to make to an in-network provider are usually only 40 to 50 percent of what I would have paid if I had been uninsured.
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An emergency room physicians’ bill here on my desk lists $632 as the charge, for which the insurer’s negotiated rate was $273.27, a 57 percent discount.
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My high-deductible health insurance policy is a membership in a huge discount medical services program. This is an important consideration that should be discussed more openly. The uninsured, by paying full freight, are subsidizing health care for those of us who are insured.
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DAVID MAIER

Richmond, Va.”

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